


Anatomy of Immortality

by the7thTrigger



Category: The Epic of Gilgamesh
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Immortality, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 14:45:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14522910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the7thTrigger/pseuds/the7thTrigger
Summary: The viper didn’t eat the plant that promises immortality.You did.





	Anatomy of Immortality

 

Palaces, temples, the rim of the world…

They say you had seen it all.

Exaltation, gratefulness, regret…

They say you had experienced it all.

But they don’t understand, and how can those mortals ever, ever understand what it means to be trapped in the river of time, wanting, wandering, and suffering for five thousand years–

Just to reach one destination.

More precisely, one stop in your endless journey.

At some point in time, you tell yourself to give up. It’s not worth it, and it’s never destined to happen. For countless nights, you close your eyes, pray to _Shamash_ , _Sin_ in desperation, and know your efforts are all in vain.

Yet. You never stop.

If only for a moment, a single heartbeat, you would do anything to get that feeling again. That feeling of falling down the highest mountain of Uruk, into the warm embrace of _Ishtar_ ’s lights.

And there was only one person in this world could ever make you feel that way.

Thus, when you see that familiar figure after 5019 years, 4 months and 7 days of futile search, you completely forget you’re in the largest fundraising party of the city, the champagne glass in your hands falls and shatters to pieces on the floor.

He startles, like a deer caught in the flash light, and turns towards your direction from the center of the hall. So then you see them clearly – his soft, long hair dancing in the air, his sculptured, beautiful jawline, and his ebony, glassy eyes –

His blind eyes.

You’ve played this scene more than a thousand times in your head, but when he’s truly standing within your reach, when his face becomes no longer a distanced memory blurred on the edge of mankind’s history, all you can do is to control yourself not to fall apart on the spot. You are not trembling because your nerves fail you, and words fail you too, and you are so overwhelmed by wonder and fear in the face of this _Aruru_ ’s miracle that you totally ignore that small mistake she made while recreating her most perfect work.

With grace that only he could ever manage, he approaches you. The smile on his face carries the same weight of warmth, but also a hint of reservation you are less familiar with. His palms, despite his elegant appearance, are as rough as how you remember them, and when he’s talking to you, a touch of colors shines through his vacant eyes – you forgot it entirely, how relaxed, almost carefree you felt when talking to him back in the old days.

But it doesn’t matter. Not anymore.

Because under those fine, modern clothes he dresses in and the carefulness he masks himself with, you still see that vibrant, wild man who you knew by heart, who you called best friend.

And that’s enough. That’s more than you could ask for.

At the end of the night, you say yes to his invitation to another party. And you answer yes to his second, third, seventh invitations.

In those three months, observing him seems to become the center of your life. You can’t deny the simple pleasure of watching that flawless face bathing in genuine delight despite its rarity, and from time to time, you see more.

You always knew how intelligent he was, but now he’s even more skillful and diplomatic than you’d like to give anyone credit for in the art of socializing. He dances around the crowd with impeccable manners, uses his defect as an advantage, a weapon, and hides his true intentions as well as the promise of violence in a gentle, brilliant smile.

He’s a wounded beautiful beast wandering the forest of skyscrapers and you’re fascinated, no, in awe of its familiarity and foreignness for every second gods send. 

Quite obviously, in this lifetime, he’s nowhere near acquainted with the notion of friends. He first invites you only because he senses some opportunities in you, his intuition must have caught a glimpse of your mind’s complicated frame. Then, your willingness, almost compliance to his every word must intrigue him, luring him to ask you again and again.

You yourself don’t even know how to act around your best friend anymore. In fear for addiction, you move away. Then in fear for losing, you move closer again. But you never hesitate long to take the next step – whichever choice you make at the moment, your path always leads you to him.

Your behaviors, reactions, at least by this century’s standard, cannot be categorized to those out of friendship. And though he can’t see the way your eyes lingering on his hair, his shoulder, his everything, can’t see how you hover over him like an overly worried mother, watching intensively at his every move, can’t see how you literally flinch whenever someone, woman or man, attempts to touch him – he feels it, your tension, your infatuation.

So that night when you are alone with him in his mansion, chatting about the minor or large slump the market is going to take soon, he kisses you. First your eyelids, then clumsily, your lips.

That’s not the first time he ever kisses you. He kissed you at the first day he met you, then every night before going to sleep thousand years before.

But this is something much different. It’s too light, too transient to be regraded a proper kiss, yet there’s nothing remotely platonic about it.

The last piece of the puzzle finally falls into place. You see him, in the new shade of light, on the new page of the epic written about the great Uruk’s king and his best friend, and you cup his face, and you close your eyes.

Hours later, when you float between dreams and reality, when his limbs intertwine with yours, you murmur to him in a low voice, telling him a story of love, pain, and immortality. You omit the parts about those Gods and Goddesses, thinking he would be already crazy enough to buy your words without mentioning those Sumerian deities.

He listens, quietly, and when you finish your story, he puts a finger on your lips, and asks you to listen carefully in return. Then he tells you a similar, but different story.

The king, in his story, did gain immortality as well. But not because he preserved that plant of youth with great care. Having seen the future, the king’s best friend, stuck in the inferno, traded his left eye for death of the viper that’s destined to steal the plant from the king’s hands. Then, five thousand years later, he traded the other eye for a chance to see the king again.

And here the greatest king of mankind’s history is, crying on the chest of his best friend, burning for his ignorance. For the price for immortality.

When you finally find you strength back, you remember telling him that you two still have time. Seventy years you can spend together in this lifetime of his, a privilege you didn’t get to have before.

 

Your journey begins at Uruk. No, there is no Uruk anymore, but that country with a foreign name is still your home.

Then you go to the places you’ve been to in memory of him, and lands even you’ve never ever stepped on.

 

Seventy years later, you mourn him the way you used to. But you do not weep this time.

You continue on your journey.

 

They say you had fought till your the breath of your life.

They say you would never give up.

… But no. You know better.

When you travel back to that lake where eternity should have been lost forever, you stop for six days. On the seventh day, you close your eyes and you dream of _Ereshkigal_ ’s river.

And you take the leap.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one hour. Sorry for any mistake if found.
> 
> Shamash: the god of the sun.  
> Sin: the god of the moon.  
> Ishtar: the goddess of love, beauty, and sex, associated with Venus, somebody we're familiar with.  
> Ereshkigal: the goddess of Kur, the land of the dead or underworld.


End file.
